Weather Conditions, Wish we were there...

Odd things and such things, as I feel appropriate, possibly relating to the war.
Email me at jll3a@hotmail.com.

Look below for links to good sites, ebooks and such.

Jerry Lawson, Proprietor

 
The Matrix Makers

Your new Year's present - a look at the upcoming "Matrix" films and the people (and technology) behind them.

Happy New Year. May it bring good things to you...

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/31/2002 09:52:00 PM

 
STAR TREK for Communists

When I was living in Moscow last year, I loved to watch reruns of a late-1960s Russian science-fiction TV show called "Kosmicheskaya Militsiya." The title translates as either Space Police or Cosmic Militia, though the show is usually called "Cosmos Patrol" in English. You could say that "Cosmos Patrol" is a lot like "Star Trek," but it would be more accurate to call it a bare-faced Commie rip-off.

Oh, the horror.... (snicker)

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/31/2002 10:27:00 AM

 
FrontPage magazine.com - The Daughter of an Arab Warrior Tells Her Tale

I plead to the wives and daughters of "Shahid" to listen. The same people who will congratulate you on your beloved "Shahid" father or son are the same people who will criticize you as a loose woman when they see you leave your homes alone without a man to run your life. The people who encourage terrorists and Shahids are cruel and evil people that hide behind the Koran for the sake of attaining power and high office. They are ready to give up these men's lives and maybe throw a little money to the families. That might fool some as support, but wait, in no time you will be alone in bringing up your kids and facing the difficulties of life alone in a merciless society that has no respect for single women. You will be without a husband and your children deprived of fathers growing up. They are ready to sacrifice generation after generation of women widowed at a young age and children orphaned!

And you have to just wonder where is the honor and dignity of a culture that would act this way? Read the entire article - you'll likely be as mad as I am.

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/30/2002 06:11:00 PM

 
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Kenya sweeps corrupt ruler out of power

Kenyans revelled in a day few dared to dream of in four decades, as the preliminary results yesterday from Friday's elections suggested a landslide victory for the opposition, sweeping away many crooks and cronies of a ruling party that has terrorised and impoverished them since independence.
With about a fifth of the poll already counted last night, Mwai Kibaki, a veteran opposition leader and former Vice-President, had won around 70 per cent of the votes. Uhuru Kenyatta, the candidate of the outgoing President Daniel arap Moi's Kanu party and son of Jomo, Kenya's founding father, had won less than 30 per cent, offering Kenya the chance of one of the most peaceful and democratic transitions from 'Big Man' rule in history.

Wow. Maybe there IS hope for Africa after all. However, it is to be noted that the folks elected aren't exactly pristine themselves. Still - the people DID vote, and they were heard. Maybe this will be a lesson to the new guys - "We put you in power, we can take you right back out again."

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/28/2002 11:50:00 PM

 
FLY GUY
One very neat flash site. Enjoy!

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/28/2002 06:51:00 PM

 
Eject! Eject! Eject!

You're a former liberal. Your worldview has been hit by heat-seeking reality and you're on fire and out of control. You have only a few decades in which to react! Think fast! Cool soothing logic tells you it's time to get out.

EJECT! EJECT! EJECT!

This site is here to convince you that all the good things you believe about America and her people are true.

Factually, provably true.
Don't believe it?
Hang on!
We're reaching for
THE LOUD HANDLE!

Occasionally, you run across web sites that both tickle your funnybone and make you think. Frankly, Metafilter doesn't do that with their political, hate the US stance. Unless you're predisposed to find and embrace the worst things you can find about the US, and ignore all the good, that is - and after a while, doesn't it get tiresome rolling around in a cesspool and pretending it's all that matters?

Sure - there's been mistakes made in the US. And our critics are legion, our supporters overseas are few. Bill Whittle isn't a critic - he admits we aren't perfect, but we're nowhere near as bad as some would love to think.

Accusations of “Imperialism” are flung at us so frequently, and met with so little defense, that it is actually shocking to see how easily such a simplisme charge can be overturned.

To be Imperial is to possess, or hope to possess, an empire, and these slanders have been made for about a century now. The Cambridge International Dictionary of English defines “empire” as “a group of countries ruled by a single person, government or country.” Oxford paperback dictionary calls it “a large group of states under single authority.” Cambridge goes on to define “imperialism” as “a system in which a country rules other countries, sometimes having used force to obtain power over them.”

ANY rational person can see that the United States does not meet these qualifications by any stretch of the imagination. What nations do we rule? Whose legislative bodies can we overturn with a wave of the hand? Where on this planet do people live under an American flag who do not wish to? And as Jonah Goldberg correctly points out, where are our governors and our tax collectors so that we can siphon off the meager wages of our Imperial Slaves? What kind of empire does not have these imperial mechanisms?

At the end of World War II, America stood astride the world as the unchallenged military and economic power. The terrible might of Germany and Japan lay crushed in smoldering ruin. Great Britain, bled white by the near-total loss of two successive generations of their best and brightest, was in barely better shape. China was a collection of pre-industrial peasants fighting a bitter civil war, and nowhere in the rest of Asia, Africa and South America did there exist anything more than local defense militias.

Only the Soviets remained as a potent military force – and that force was essentially tactical, not strategic, in nature. While strong in tanks, artillery and men, it had no navy to speak of, and an air force consisting mostly of close support ground-attack aircraft such as the Il-2 Sturmovik. While effective against ground targets, the Red Army in 1945 had nothing resembling US heavy bombers such as the B-17, the B-24, or the magnificent B-29.

On the other hand, the United States not only had what was far and away the world’s preeminent Navy; we also had large numbers of long-range strategic bombers and swarms of highly-seasoned fighter escorts. We had a Marine Corps flush with victories: battle-hardened men who had invented through blood and horror the means to go ashore on enemy beaches and stay there. We had an Army whose courage and skill in battle was unsurpassed, and whose critical supply and ordinance staffs were, by far, the best in the world.

And, of course, we had the atomic bomb, and the will to use it.

History has never, and will never, record a time when such power existed in the hands of a nation, nor of a time when opposing forces were so weak and in such a state of disarray and abject surrender.

And these feared and ruthless Americans, a people who had incinerated cities in Europe and Japan and whose ferocity and tenacity on island jungles and French beaches had brought fanatical warrior cultures to their knees – what did these new conquerors of the world do?

They went home is what they did. They did pause for a few years to rebuild the nations sworn to their destruction and the murder of their people. They carbon-copied their own system of government and enforced it on their most bitterly hated enemy, a people who have since given so much back to the world as a result of this generosity. They left troops in and sent huge sums of money to Europe to rebuild what they all knew would eventually become trading partners, but also determined competitors. Then they sent huge steel blades through their hard-earned fleets of ships and airplanes and came home to get on with their lives in peace and quiet.

Long article - well worth reading, about how the US is NOT empire-building - but other countries expect us to hand them freedom on a silver platter, ignoring the work that's gone on and is still going on in the US that built that freedom, that strength. Freedom isn't free - it has to be paid for and the cost is very, very dear.

His comments on France, and their cultural elitism -

We are widely criticized among Europeans for what they call our cultural and economic hegemony. They decry our pop culture as vulgar and commercial, and in fact, it often is. McDonald’s are now everywhere on the European continent, and we are reminded what horrible, fattening food it is. Agreed.

What doesn’t seem to get through their anti-populist, anti-American blinders is that basic economic principle of supply and demand. I suppose we shouldn’t be too shocked to hear this. The birthplace, intellectual home and last bastion of Marxism has always had a tough time with economic reality.

They also have a tough time with democracy, and the idea of people – you know, the masses – making their own decisions. And the thing that breaks the heart of every European elitist is the inescapable fact that McDonald’s and Cheers are huge in Europe, because their own people can’t get enough of it.

I have never been to France myself, but I would presume that daily life there does not consist of squads of heavily armed US Marines rounding up the terrified population, herding them into McDonald’s at gunpoint, and shaking their last euros out of them. When France passes laws saying that some minimal percentage of their television programming (I think it is 50%) must be produced in France, then that is an admission – and it must be, if you will pardon the pun, a galling one – that huge numbers of their people prefer our culture over their own.

Fact is, dreadful or not, McDonald’s is not subsidized by the US Department of World Hegemony. They are a business concern. The day European customers stop eating at McDonald’s the McDonald’s WILL go away.

But they do not. They are growing like mushrooms. American television programming has to be legally constrained. I suspect that Spider-Man out-drew more Europeans in a weekend than all of the films of Truffaut's did in the United States over forty years. This is telling them something, and what it is telling them is that our culture has a greater hold over the imaginations of their own people than theirs does.

To the Average French citizen, I imagine Spider-Man, Cheers and McDonald’s represent more or less what they do to Americans: a fun couple of hours, a few laughs, and something quick to scarf down when you’re in a hurry. Big deal.

But to the deep-thinking elites of Europe, these trends are catastrophic, and terrifying. For it shows them, yet again, that a mob of boorish, unsophisticated, common brutes – that’d be us – is able to produce art and music and culture that cleans the clock of any nation that lets it in the door.

Spider-Man and McDonalds, and the long lines of their own countrymen waiting eagerly for a taste of them, prove to them daily that the European cultural superiority that they so deeply believe in is…how do we say this delicately…uh, wrong.

And of course, being unwilling to face these unpleasant logical inferences, the blame has to be put somewhere. And who better to blame than a blinded, staggering, idiotic Cyclops, smashing all the delicate china in its drunken, obnoxious rampage?

The author, Bill Whittle, has a rare and wonderful gift for writing. Very enjoyable, very thought-provoking. Highly, highly recommended - and included in the links list to the left.

So remember - if non-pc reality's about to explode on you - EJECT! EJECT! EJECT!

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/28/2002 12:25:00 PM

 
Pyongyang may have A-bomb in 30 days

RESTARTING its nuclear reactor could enable North Korea to produce nuclear weapons in as little as 30 days, according to one of Britain’s leading nuclear experts.

John Large, who has worked with the Royal Navy, advised Russia on the sunken nuclear submarine Kursk, and is on the UK Nuclear Co-ordinating Group, said that North Korea’s only motive for restarting the reactor was to produce nuclear weapons.

On a cold December night, this doesn't cheer me at all.

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/26/2002 08:54:00 PM

 
And a Merry Christmas to all...

We went to our church's service last night - and I don't know what it was, whether it's the news, the weather (3 inches of rain in the last two days), the seasonal music, my parents being sick, or what - but I had a very bad feeling about the upcoming year. A looming gloom that seemed to darken the church, and I sure hope I'm wrong - but I felt like we're going to be missing a whole lot of people next year - more than half, in fact...

I really hate getting feelings like this. I'm sure hoping it's just the weather. But in all honestly, if there's some biowarfare attempts against the US, using something communicable like smallpox, we could see fatalities in the 30-40% range. And I keep getting the feeling like time is running out while we watch the diplomats samba around the hard questions.

Now, there's a lot of folk who think that a diplomatic answer for Iraq is obtainable. I don't agree. We've been attempting to use diplomacy for the last 13 years. (Lucky number, that - eh?) And it has FAILED. Not just "not worked very well" - it's allowed Saddam to build monumental palaces on the bones of his people, while blaming the rest of the world for the starvation and deprivations he causes in his own country.

And then there's foreign 'human sheilds' who are volunteering to go protect his military installations. Apparently they think their presence will keep us from bombing. And, as one of them says:

A common accusation is that [Voices in the Wilderness members in Iraq] have failed to criticise Saddam and his brutal rule while attacking the West. Their mere presence in Iraq, say critics, is sanctioning the regime. "Our view is that there are plenty of channels for opinions about Saddam and the rulers of Iraq to be expressed," said Ms Kelly.

"We want to concentrate on the terrible effect the economic war is having on Iraq and how the country will be devastated if the US and Britain decide to attack.

Now, who started the war? Who refused to comply with UN resolutions? Who is keeping his people under a reign of terror according to Amnesty International? Who's pursuing nukes and apparently well along the way for bioweapons, and would use them on his neighbor states?

But they're the good guys - and we're the bad.

Anyway. Merry Christmas. May my imaginings just be caused by a bit of underdone beef, a bad dream, or bad weather. Hold your loved ones tight... and remember what's really important is not being the first in your neighborhood to have the latest toys, but the time you spend with the ones you love.

Now, get off the damn computer and go hug someone, okay?

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/25/2002 07:54:00 PM

 
Palestinians call off January election

A Palestinian general election scheduled for January has been postponed indefinitely because of Israel’s reoccupation of West Bank cities, a Palestinian cabinet minister said on Sunday.

In other news, the rate of Palestinians shooting themselves in the foot has reached an all-time high.

These guys aren't serious about governing themselves. They'd rather blame everything on the Israeli occupation. That way, they can be 'heros', instead of having to deal with the daily minutiae of running a city. Whole lot easier to blame all your troubles on someone else... than try to change what they could.

My sympathy-meter for the Palestinians is really getting into negative numbers.

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/22/2002 11:14:00 PM

 
News Release: December 19, 2002

Widespread vaccination of Americans against smallpox is too dangerous to justify unless the likelihood of a major biological attack on the United States is substantial, but it is prudent to vaccinate health care workers now against the deadly disease, according to a new study by the RAND Center for Domestic and International Health Security.

The study, published on the Web site of the New England Journal of Medicine, estimates that if 60 percent of the U.S. population were immunized, there would be about 500 deaths — a price too high to pay if there is little chance of a widespread attack against America with the smallpox virus, researchers said.

Okay - how do you judge the risk of attack? And what are we looking at - a single-point attack at one airport or office building, or multiple attacks - say 20 airports in one day? Hit Seattle, LA, Denver, St. Louis, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Orlando, New York, Baltimore, Washington, London-Heathrow, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Paris, Quebec, Mexico City, Sidney, Bombay... and Riyadh.

Why Riyadh? Because that would mean that it wasn't Arabs or Al Quaeda that did it, instead it had to be Mossad or some other evil Zionist agency trying to start a war with the Arab world.

The main problem as I see it, is that the RAND study discounts the suceptability of the population to the smallpox virus, and (to my thinking) the ease of transmission of the virus. For example, at http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v281n22/ffull/jst90000.html
the following is found:

Smallpox spreads from person to person, primarily by droplet nuclei or aerosols expelled from the oropharynx of infected persons and by direct contact. Contaminated clothing or bed linens can also spread the virus. There are no known animal or insect reservoirs or vectors.

And honestly, if there wasn't a potential for smallpox to be used as a biowarfare agent, I'd be inclined to agree with the RAND report. But I feel the government should err on the pessimistic side here and do the vaccinations - because the consequences if we err on the optimistic side are far too high.

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/22/2002 11:08:00 PM

 
Okay....

As related earlier, Big Blue was acting as nutty as a squirrel stockpiling for the winter after transplanting things into a new case. I finally bit the big one and reinstalled Win98 - but that didn't help much. I installed a new network card and video card (a cheap one, a REALLY cheap one - anyone need a REALLY cheap video card for a server somewhere?) and was able to get it running somewhat.

However - then I tried to do some scanning with it. No joy - it'd start 'warming the lamp', and nothing else would happen. I also tried to backup Ralph the PDA, and was getting MSCVRT errors like crazy. Reloaded the software, massaged the registry, nothing helped.

In the meantime, the WinXP Pro Upgrade I ordered arrived. I delayed installing it, wanting to toss it onto a system that was at least MARGINALLY working. Finally, after two days of intermittent work I figured "What the hell." and started the upgrade.

Which promptly failed.

Now, I'm no stranger to the eccentricities of Windows installs. Some are enough to make a grown man weep in frustration, some are merely aggravating. And I know how to get around a lot of them - so I tried one of the techniques I've used with success before. Take one CD full of data, and toss it into a subdirectory on drive D: - then run the Setup program out of that subdirectory. Took ten minutes to copy the stuff over, then I click on "Setup" and crossed my fingers.

10 minutes later and a lot of quick screen flips, it asked me for the Product Key. Then I turned and walked away - it would either fail and wait for me, or it'd make it all the way through, in which case it'd wait for me.

A half-hour later, I came down to check - and it needed authorization to reboot the system. I told it to - and it rebooted and continued the process. (It also seems to have dumped my dual-boot loader, Linux and Windows, but no real biggie there...)

I checked back an hour later - and it was ready for me to set up the desktop. Network was fine, it imported all my drivers, saw the printers, software I'd installed seemed to be working - and after reinstalling the Scanjet and Palm software, it was ready to roll. It even smoothed out the operations on the video card. Impressive...

Now, I've been messing with Microsoft operating systems since Dos 1.0. I've seen a lot of odd problems with updates and upgrades - but this must have been the absolute easiest update I've ever done since that first install of Dos. I was impressed, and pleased.

Microsoft may well have managed to finally get things right.

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/22/2002 03:44:00 PM

 
CNN.com - N. Korea overrides surveillance on nuclear plant - Dec. 21, 2002

North Korea has cut most of the seals placed on a deactivated nuclear reactor by international inspectors and has blocked monitoring equipment at the reactor, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Saturday.

Oh, boy. Wonder if... nah - they wouldn't be trying to get concessions... would they?

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/21/2002 10:20:00 PM

 
San-X???Okay....

As you probably know, the Japanese have a tendency to anthropomorphize things that probably shouldn't be.

Like tissues.

(Sigh.)

Just a bit'o'wierdness to end the day with. Enjoy!

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/18/2002 10:53:00 PM

 
Sean Penn Says War in Iraq Is Avoidable (washingtonpost.com)

The former Hollywood bad boy and Oscar nominee paid for a $56,000 advertisement in the Washington Post in October accusing President Bush of stifling debate on Iraq.

Uh, guy? You got to go to Bagdad? You got your name splashed on Drudge? And debate is stifled?

If you can buy an advertisement against the war, how is debate stifled?

(sound effect clue-stick - wwwwwwwWWWWWWWWHOOOSHCRACK!... Thud.)

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/15/2002 11:57:00 AM

 
HistoryWired: A few of our favorite things - A Steam-Jack

The steam jack, patented in 1792 and built about 1793-4 is unique in this appraiser’s experience, and as stated I have dealt with jacks, as early mechanical objects possessing a certain fascination, as frequently over the past 24 years as their scarcity would allow. Documentation exists on the jack. So there can be little question of its authenticity. The marvelous aspect is that it not only survived but survived in very fine condition. It is an elegantly designed machine: simple, making use of few parts, of very pleasing proportions, and though doubtless these were once made in some quantity (relative to the populace of the times) the conditions for regular usage coupled with their small size and the subsequent change in cooking technology would, one would think, preclude the survival of any, certainly in this remarkably fine condition; one wonders if the photographs sent could only mean that it reposed happily on a hearth for many years.

Technology - far advanced for it's time. Makes you wonder, though, what might have happened if electricity hadn't become the prime mover and we were still using steam.

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/15/2002 11:06:00 AM

 
Odd feeling today...

I'm not quite sure what it is. I'm out at the base today - and it's been a usual off-UTA day. Very quiet, no phone ringing, no work to do. And after today, not counting the two weeks coming up in January at Warner Robbins, I'll have three more UTAs to go before retirement, seven days total.

It's an odd feeling to be so short like this. Looking at a close to a 'career' spanning 28 years is kind of surreal. I swung by a McDonalds for lunch, and the girl at the window is going in - eager and looking forward to an adventure. I kind of envy her.

When I came in after graduating from high school in 1974, I don't think I ever figured I'd be in this long. Maybe six years, get out and go to college, maybe twenty and retire. But twenty-eight years have come and gone since I first raised my hand. If I were around in June next year (and I may be, all things considered) it'll be 29... Damn, they go by fast.

Oh, don't get me wrong. It's been pretty good, overall. Active duty was okay, though I really wish I'd chosen something other than missile maintenance on the Minuteman III ICBMs to start with - but life is sometimes all about finding out what you DON'T want to do for a living, right? Reserve work, shoveling paper, isn't too exciting but it's steady. Haven't learned much from it, except how to sort large stacks of papers quickly and efficiently, but a lot of that's just been choice. I've let a lot of opportunities slip away, and ignored others - and some just never showed. But I've been places I'd never go otherwise - from the bottom of a Minuteman launch tube a hundred feet underground, to seeing the stars from 42,000 feet in the blacked-out cockpit of a C-130 crossing the Atlantic. I've seen dawn come up over the Appalachians, and the sun set in the Mediterranian. The AF is a 24-7 operation, after all.

I've seen trees full of parakeets in Panama, I've seen blizzards in Wyoming and New York. I've worked with hot new technology, like GPS receivers in 1982, when it took 4 days to catch enough signals to get a good position and elevation. I've worked with intertial positioning systems and hardware that was hot, then not. That's the way it goes.

Seen uniforms come and go - seen a lot of changes in how they do things - but overall, there's one thing that remains the same. And it'll be the same after I'm gone. "Everything changes, and nothing changes..."

The mission remains. And there will be folks like myself who will dedicate their working lives to making sure that the mission is accomplished. Whatever that mission might be.

Keep them flying, AF! Aim high!

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/14/2002 01:14:00 PM

 
Mac Addicts to the Rescue

Mac Addicts to the Rescue
or
How I Caught a Counterfeiter with a Little Help from my Friends

Rip not off the Mac users, for they are quick to anger and resourceful.

(Way to go, guy!)

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/14/2002 11:28:00 AM

 
The Atlantic | November 2002 | The Kabul-ki Dance | Bowden

What was the human cost of all this state-of-the-art expertise? The Pentagon does not attempt to tally casualties among enemy combatants, but given how many bombs were dropped and targets destroyed, the numbers in Afghanistan had to be well into the thousands. As for innocent victims, there are likewise no good estimates. Casualty counts are effectively propaganda, so they are all suspect. Human-rights groups, many of which oppose war categorically, say thousands of innocents died. Marc W. Herold, a professor of economics at the University of New Hampshire, who has a decided antiwar bent, used primarily media accounts but also interviews with refugees to calculate that the two-month campaign produced at least 3,767 civilian casualties. But that number appears to be grandly inflated. A study by the Project on Defense Alternatives, a nonprofit academic defense-policy group, using fewer data but more-stringent categories than Herold did, estimated 1,000 to 1,300 civilian deaths, and a New York Times investigation last summer put the total closer to 400.

This is a VERY good article about what's going on in mil-land re the air war. Read. Enjoy...

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/14/2002 11:12:00 AM

 
Trent Lott.. Trent Lott. Trent Lott. The man's the AntiChrist! HE MUST BE DESTROYED!!!
Can we end all this, please? I think this whole damn mess has really been blown out of proportion. Here's a colleage honoring a guy on his hundrendth birthday, talking about his political career. And in any politician's life, surely the biggest and most memorable event must be running for President!

The last 54 years have been pretty troublesome from a political point of view. Korea, Vietnam, Watergate, all with a subtext of nuclear war hanging over it.

Now maybe I'm just politically insensitive, or maybe not hypersensitive, and I know I'm not PC, but I don't see how saying to someone a hundred years old who ran in '48 and lost big-time that 'if he'd got elected into office we wouldn't have all these problems today' is condoning segregation and the racial outlooks of 1948. Unless you're LOOKING for something to hang him on, and willing to use any pretext possible.

What should he have said? "Strom, it's a damn good thing your lily-white nigger-hating sorry ass didn't get elected in '48"? Sadly, I think that's the only thing that might have been acceptable.

I wouldn't know Trent Lott from any other joe on the street. He supposedly tried to keep Blacks out of his fraternity in the early 60's. God, the HORROR!

HELLO! In Mississippi in '60s, segregation was the custom AND the law. Can't it be figured that his attitudes have changed in 40+ years? Or is it only Democrats who are given a pass and allowed to change their stances like that? Once someone says or does something, they're locked into that pattern for the rest of their life?

I don't know about you - but I've changed my mind about the acceptability of a lot of things since I was 18. Actually LIVING does that to you - if you pay any attention at all to what works and what doesn't. It tends to strip away the ideas and ideals that DO NOT WORK, do NOT advance you, and replace them with those that do. If, that is, you pay ATTENTION to your sucesses and failures - and learn from both.

Most people don't, by the way. Took me close to 20 years (and innumerable failed relationships) to figure out what I was doing wrong from a relationship standpoint - and next year Sue and I will have been married ten years. So people CAN learn, CAN change. When they want to.

And it goes to show how 'tired' we are of the WoT if it's something as honestly MINOR as this that gets a week's play in the media.

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/14/2002 09:28:00 AM

 
Washington is now ‘Stim City’

Dec. 12 — In the face of a recession that has dragged on for 21 months and stock market indexes that are 40 percent or more below their 2000 peaks, President Bush and congressional Democrats have found some common ground on elements of an economic stimulus plan that would give tax breaks to investors and to workers.

Damn.

(wide eyed wonder) Cooperating on tax cuts? Dogs and cats living together... Wait - is that a flock of pigs flying overhead?

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/12/2002 11:03:00 PM

 
This has not been a very good week.

Putting Julia to sleep was tough on Tuesday, and Wednesday I got a call that my mother was having problems. Father had to call 911 to get help getting her back in bed after she couldn't make it back from the bathroom. Their departure on Saturday was rough, with Father getting a dizzy spell and causing Mother to fall - and actually, judging from his somewhat slurred speech Mother's thought that he may have had a mini-stroke could be close to the mark. Today she was diagnosed with pneumonia and put in the hospital. At 84, pneumonia is nothing to fool with.

Couple it with gloomy weather and minor job worries, and it's just not been a very good week. (Job worries? Well, our call load is way, way down, and they're looking at laying off some of the temps and latest hires. Luckily, I've been with them for 4 years and am one of the senior people out there - so we'll just see if I'm looking for a job after Christmas or what.)

December is a cruel month...

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/12/2002 10:20:00 PM

 
The anti-war movement in Hollywood is getting more vocal - but what I'm hearing isn't making much sense. They're against a war because innocent civilians may get killed - which is sensible enough. But their apparent opinions on options are an excellent case of "Good Lord, would someone PLEASE hit them with a clue-stick before they talk again?"

War isn't a good option - they're right about that. But are any of the other options better? Let's face it - waiting out Saddam is playing his game. He's starving his people so he can build palaces and increase his war reserves. When he figures he has a chance of 'winning', he'll act. We can do nothing - and wait for him to act first before we react - which will insure countless deaths in that area. We can shake our fingers sternly at him and impose sanctions, and ignore him snickering. He's not been seriously affected by sanctions up to now (though his people are) so why would they bother him? UN Inspections, as Jimmy Carter suggests, are ineffective unless there's teeth to back up the snarl. The 'inspections' in the 90's pretty well proved that.

In my opinion, war is the 'least bad option' of a range of crappy ones. The best scenario would be for Saddam to die in his sleep, his sons to abandon Iraq and head north to yank out Dad's cash stash from Switzerland, but have their plane run short of fuel and crash in the Alps w/no survivors. Then the Iraqi Parliment votes en mass to adopt the US Constitution as a model for their government, voluntarily disarm, and kick out Islamic fundamentalists. They take the cash that Saddam's stashed and use it to turn themselves into a progressive, freedom-loving economic powerhouse That's a pretty nice dream, isn't it?

I was listening to Fox news on the drive in, and they had a bit on the actors against the war. One said "I can't imagine how I'm wrong" in opposing military action.

For an actor - you don't have much of an imagination. Or you refuse to use it - I don't know which it is.

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/11/2002 09:02:00 AM

 
We put Julia to sleep today. She was a good cat, sweet-tempered and very gentle with Aaron when he was in the "It moves! I'm going to grab it!" stage of babyhood. She was a stray who adopted Sue a couple of years before I met her.

She'd been losing weight and throwing up - so Sue took her to the vet last week, who recommended we get an ultrasound on her abdomen, to see what that lump was he spotted. Well, we found out today when they did the ultrasound. Lymphoma, and it had spread throughout her abdomen, with over 13 tumors in the liver alone. There wasn't any point in operating, or going the chemo route.

Julia loved tuna, and had it for breakfast this morning...

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/10/2002 10:45:00 PM

 
Damn, that's annoying 2...

I've gotten a new network card, and a cheap video card - the network card went in smoothly, but Network Neighborhood resolutely refuses to admit that the network is there - despite being able to map to a shared drive on the other system. Internet? Forget it - I can't get IE or Netscape to work - getting socket/system resource errors.

Ah, well. It's a learning experience... I think soon I'm going to be learning how to install Win2K on the beast if it doesn't shape up real quick. Anyone know where I can get a copy of Win2kPro for less than $200? A licensed copy... I have no desire to skirt copyright law where a reporting O/S is concerned.

J

posted by Jerry at 12/10/2002 02:47:00 PM

 
Damn, that's annoying.

I've been using a PC-Chips system board in Big Blue (the 800 mhz Athlon) for the last few years. It's not the fastest, and it's got a few quirks - like trying to see any AGP card as an AGP SCSI device (a scsi graphics card... wow.) but it's been pretty steady.

I've been monitoring case and cpu temperatures (you can do it with this board, an MLR800, just in case you want to know what to stay away from...) and CPU temps are in the upper 30s (C) with an occasional excursion to 45, (which I can't explain, since the fans run constantly...) unless the side's off the case, in which case it goes down to low 30s. The case vents are such that I should be getting decent cooling, and serious overclockers would say I'm being a wimp and I shouldn't worry until I can use the power supply exhaust air to toast marshmallows, but I'm of the opinion that large heat sinks are a GOOD thing - and the cooler the better when it comes to CPU temps.

So, I ordered another case. From Colorcases.com, which has some pretty neat cases at very low prices. ($28 for the Mars-X) Of course, the base bare case is something you need to install ALL your parts in - from the power supply on up - but that's no problem. I know which end of a screwdriver to grab, and it'll be a learning experience for Aaron.

We got all the parts out of the old case. We got all the parts in the new case. Aaron went to bed, and I got all the various control wires in place and took the system downstairs to power up - and the video got glitchy and the system started having problems. Very slow to start, system hung every so often in Win98. Tried booting it under Linux, same problem. Loads up, changes video modes to desktop and SPROING! No video.

Well, I suppose I can't gripe too much - the video card in it is roughly six years old and the weather's been dry - static likely got it. (Darn near killed off the DVD player when I zapped it - had to unplug it to reset it the other night.) So I yank out the graphics accellerator and try again - and video is still glitchy but the system gets to the desktop. Have to reinstall drivers, but it eventually works. System still slow as dirt - and I find out why. The network firewall has packed it in.

I use "Tiny Personal Firewall" - a freeware/shareware firewall that's done a pretty good job for me over the years. But why did THAT decide to pack it in?

Because the network adapter isn't admitting anything exists outside the connector on it, apparently causing the system to hang occasionally. I'm getting a decent light on the router - but it's not talking. I tried reinstalling the software and drivers, but no luck. The Linksys software maintains that it can't see the router five feet away. I can't remove and replace the card, it's integrated on the system board. Luckily the firewall uninstalls gracefully - but the network port is still dead. Won't see a network, even after having the drivers yanked and reinstalled....

Very aggravating... Went over to MicroCenter and got a new network card at lunch. With luck, I should be able to disable the integrated adapter and install the new one fairly fast, and get the system up and going this evening.

Moral? Watch out for static. I should have known better than to work on all this without the case being grounded, and grounding myself to the case. Add in a little boy dressed in fashionable polyester, and this was an ESD problem looking to happen. With luck, ALL I'll be out is a new network card and video card. (And no, I didn't get high-end for either. $14 for the network card, $20 for the video. This isn't a high-end gaming system, after all...

And the CPU temp? When I was able to get it going, it stabilized at 29-30C.

Man, the things I'll do to stay cool...

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/09/2002 03:18:00 PM

 
Democratic Underground has totally lost it. In a

Amid Smallpox Outbreaks, Bush Calls for Calm, Shopping
December 7, 2002
By David Albrecht

WASHINGTON, DC - "The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta confirmed early this afternoon that smallpox outbreaks are underway in eight American cities. The cities are: New York, Baltimore, Raleigh NC, Jacksonville FL, San Antonio, New Orleans, St. Louis and Seattle. CDC confirmation of additional outbreaks in Los Angeles, San Diego, Salt Lake City and Santa Fe, NM is expected by late tonight." A lovely little article - with zip about it being a spoof or satire. But it does beg the question:

Why do they hate the US so?

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/09/2002 02:55:00 PM

 
CNN - Poll - Is Saddam Sincere?

Saddam 'apologized' for invading Kuwait. (Actually, considering the tone it was more "I'm sorry I didn't suceed in taking you over", but that may just be me reading into it.)

But is it flying in the US? Doesn't seem to be - the vote is about 10 to 1 against.

I think it's getting real clear to a lot of former Saddam supporters that they may have put their money on the wrong horse. And they're changing their minds on whether he's worthy of that support.

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/08/2002 01:09:00 AM

 
CBC News - Indepth: Iraq

The four Canadians, sponsored by an anti-war organization called Voices in the Wilderness, have volunteered to be human shields in an effort to dissuade American-led forces from attacking Iraq. “I’m not too scared,” Vandas told CBC News Online the day before she left. “I think it will be a powerful experience.”

Uhhh... yeah. Right.

Powerful.

Yes, I'd say she's right on that...

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/06/2002 10:50:00 PM

 
FOXNews.com

After taking full command of oil-rich Iraq in 1979, Saddam went on a spree of palace-building across Iraq. He is known to travel among them, partly because he fears assassination. He often spends only a brief period in one palace before moving to another.
The opulence of the palaces contrasts starkly with the drab existence of ordinary Iraqis. The economy has plummeted because of the international economic sanctions that resulted from Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

So Saddam built palaces while his people starve...

But Amnesty International still thinks he's a peach of a fellow, and their spokesman is angry about the British report detailing the fear and intimidation that the populace lives under.

Amnesty International is rendering themselves irrelevant in the scheme of things. They cannot - they WILL not - condemn Saddam's excesses. If they do, then they'll have to start condemning a lot of other countries and take the heat for being silent for a long time about very well documented 'excesses'.

It's far easier to lambast the US.

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/03/2002 04:51:00 PM

 
It's SO much fun when your folks come to visit.

Yesterday we were headed over to the Dekalb Farmer's Market - Mother visited it for the first time when Sue and I got married, and she loves the place. So, naturally, when we were about to get on the freeway Mother started compaling about chest pains.

She's 84.

We beat feet to the nearest hospital, where she threw up, burped, and the pain started to diminish. But we spent all day in the ER anyhow - just to be on the safe side. Blood work showed okay, X-Rays were negative, and everything looked the way it should for her age.

We're going to try again today...

J.


posted by Jerry at 12/03/2002 09:59:00 AM

 
Oh, good heavens!

You know, there's times I've wanted to do this to our two myself....

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/02/2002 09:40:00 PM

 
'A Terrifying Place to Live'

"Iraqi citizens face systematic torture, rape, murder by Baghdad regime, according to British government report."

You expected something else? Like Iraq's a virtual paradise, led by a benevolent, kindly man?



Get real.

J.

posted by Jerry at 12/02/2002 02:39:00 PM

 
salon :: :: mwt :: feature :: A memo to American Muslims, By M. A. Muqtedar Khan :: Page 1

The biggest victims of hate-filled politics as embodied in the actions of several Muslim militias all over the world are Muslims themselves. Hate is the extreme form of intolerance and when individuals and groups succumb to it they can do nothing constructive. Militias like the Taliban have allowed their hate for the West to override their obligation to pursue the welfare of their people and as a result of their actions not only have thousands of innocent people died in America, but thousands of people will die in the Muslim world.

This was written on 10/18/2001. Oddly enough, it didn't get much press at the time.

Sigh. You know - there's times when my suspicious mind works in ugly ways. Who, in the US, would benefit most from projecting the Muslims as being intolerant fanatics? Which corporations (excluding oil) would reap the most profit from a war with Islam in general?

What business in the US reached it's peak during the Gulf War, and has been sliding downhill in credibility ever since?

Think about it. And it's one expose you'll never see on CNN...

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/29/2002 11:39:00 PM

 
CNN.com - Launchers, missiles found near Kenya airport - Nov. 29, 2002

Kenyan authorities said Friday they found two launchers and two unused surface-to-air missiles less than one-quarter mile from the end of the runway where an Israeli charter aircraft narrowly escaped being shot down as it took off Thursday.

In the accompanying photos, the missile launchers are shown. SA-7 Grails, firing the Strela missile. Range, about 3.6 km, infrared guidance, looks like a gas-cooled seeker head on the missile. They're nothing to write home about.

But there's something troubling. In the US military, custom has it that training weapons and gear are usually painted blue, colored blue, or (in the case of droppable ordnance) circlued with a blue stripe. Blue denotes practice gear.

These launchers are painted blue. A pleasing blue. The shade isn't US standard mil blue, but seeing they're SA-7s I'm not surprised at that. What's surprising is the blue shade is very similar to UN blue, to these eyes. I don't like that - I don't like it at all. I'm not one of those nuts who see the UN as trying to take over the world - but I wonder if there isn't a UN weapons storage room in Kenya that's missing some hardware.

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/29/2002 10:46:00 PM

 
The Indepundit

USAMA BIN LADEN IS DEAD -- This is the logical conclusion that one must reach after learning that scientists at Switzerland's highly regarded Dalle Molle Institute of Perceptual Artificial Intelligence have determined that the latest Bin Laden audiotape is almost certainly a fake.

Kind of thought so, with him being so quiet and all. Real hard to talk when you're rotting in a cave somewhere, or been scattered via daisy cutter.

And now, Usama Bin Elvis impersonators can flood the market...

(Yeah, I know. I'm not being sensitive to the feelings of all who might find this blog who love Elvis. Sorry about that....)

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/29/2002 03:11:00 PM

 
:: Self-Healing Minefield ::Neat flash animations...

Somehow, the idea just tickles my funny bone. In a perfect world, such a thing would be superflous. But it's not a perfect world.

Enjoy.

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/28/2002 10:55:00 PM

 
Shi'a Pundit

Ideofact has comprehensively analyzed how Qutb's ideas (which are just distilled versions of Maudoodi and Wahab) are not only internally contradictory but flout the entire history of Islam and discard the theologic traditions of the past 1400 years. It is supreme understatement to say that Qutb has been discredited, and Ideofact is hardly alone. In fact, throughout the Arab world and the greater Muslim sphere, Qutb (and Wahab) have been attacked with great effect by prominent Islamic thinkers, intellectuals, and clerics. Unfortunately, this repudiation of extremism is completely ignored by the Western media.

There is hope. Though I despair sometimes of the sanity of the Islamic extremists, I occasionally come across things that show a much different side of Islam - and I remember that the media is not engaged in showing us what's going on in Islam, so much as they're trying to get ratings share. This includes print, this includes web, this includes broadcast media.

Good news is no news. Reason and rationality, a thought out and cogent analysis of things - that's not interesting enough to be worthwhile.

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/26/2002 11:05:00 PM

 
Crime and Holy Punishment (washingtonpost.com)

The kiddies on ClearGuidance.com, the Islamic site that's been featured on LittleGreenFootballs.com for the way the kiddies drool over Jihad, over the possibility of living in a state under sharia law, over how NICE Muslims are as comared to the unbelievers - REALLY need to read this.

A shame ClearGuidance.Com is having problems finding a host anymore. Maybe trading those Jihadic snuff videos wasn't such a good idea, eh?

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/24/2002 10:03:00 PM

 
t a c i t u s: Casualty

This is the body of Bonnie Witheral, a 31-year old nurse with the Christian Missionary Alliance. She spent her days tending to the needs of Palestinian refugees in the Ain el-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon. She was shot three times in the head.

Make no mistake -- our enemies want us dead by virtue of who we are. What we do, what we say, what we think means nothing to them. Thus they murder even those of us who devote themselves to the welfare of their indigent co-religionists. And so when I see inaction, prevaricating, and excuse-making on the part of our leadership....well, I can't help but think that the Bonnie Witherals past, present and future deserve better.

They say diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice Doggie" until you can get a good thick stick or pick up a rock. We've been diplomatic - until we've been bitten. Now, we're picking up the stick. We whalloped Afghanistan, and though Saddam's baring his fangs, I think in a few weeks he's going to find out just how well-aimed and hard we can whomp him.

But here's the deal - The problem is not with the US. It's not with Christainity. It IS with Islam. The Islamists and their violence CAUSE poverty and ignorance. Nigeria lost the money the Miss Universe beauty pagent would have brought, BECAUSE of Islamist terrorism. The middle east remains in the grip of ignorance BECAUSE of fundamentalist Islam. It's not with the poverty in the regions afflicted with Islamic violence - it IS with the attitude of the Islamic fundamentalists and their violence CAUSING poverty and ignorance. Nigeria lost the money the Miss Universe beauty pagent would have brought, BECAUSE of Islamist terrorism. The middle east remains in the grip of ignorance BECAUSE of fundamentalist Islam.

And that grip will not relax. It won't relax if we 'accept Islam', or if we treat them with the 'respect' they demand - which is conspicuously absent when dealing with folks from outside faiths. It'll relax when Islamic mullahs understand three things -

1. They don't have a monopoly on hatred. They 'hate' us, we don't hate them - yet. We've been patient - very patient. We basically were patient enough that we ignored them around the world, until Al Quaeda and the Taliban got our attention. They didn't want it once they got it - but that's the breaks. We don't hate them - yet. We don't want to destroy them - yet. We AREN'T really pissed off at the entire religion - YET. But it won't take much more for the switch to go from OFF to EXTERMINATE. Try another 9/11, set off a nuke in the US - and the Muslims in the US who complained bitterly because they were looked on with suspicion after 9/11 will be lucky to escape with their lives. And worldwide - Islamic organizations will be fair game.

2. Their dedicated ignorace of science, technology, industry, and modern warfare have left them in a peculiar position - rather like the Kzin in Larry Niven's "Known Universe" stories. A large, fierce race who's idea of tactics was to scream and leap - they couldn't understand why they kept getting their tails kicked by those weak, wimpy hairless monkeys. Why, one on one they were no problem - but together? The Kzinti lost every time. They were warriors! They loved to fight! They were the best! And they got beaten by humans - who didn't want to fight, and found ways to shorten the fight as much as possible, usually by raining destruction on the Kzin in an efficient as possible manner. I see a very strong parallel - and we're way ahead in the 'rain death and destruction' category.

3. The oil we're dependent on from the ME is a double-edged sword. They need us to buy it - because without it, they've literally got nothing to fall back on. Agriculture? Scientific advancements? Resources other than oil? There's not much, and they know it. And what's worse, they import their technology, their medicine, their food - without the income from oil, it all goes away. And we don't have to buy from them.


Put those three things together - and the next time they try to bite us we're going to kick their teeth in and proceed to cut their throats.

If you look back over this blog, you'll find I didn't always feel that way. I felt there was the possibility of co-existance, that there were good things about Islam, that it was only a minor sect of Islam that was causing the problems. I'm not sure I believe that any more, and I'm not sure what can be done to take out the intolerant taint that Islam seems to have acquired. Or, indeed, even if it can be done. But I find I'm out of patience, that the protestations of being a "Religion of Peace" are ringing very hollow. The Taliban and the Islamic fundamentalists wanted to bring the world back the 7th Century.

It's the 21st. There's no going back.

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/24/2002 09:54:00 PM

 
Okay - here's a question for you. There's a lot of people who want "Peace." The idea is that there is nothing more valuable than "Peace". Everything is worth sacrificing for "Peace".

Is sacrificing the American way of life worth it?

Would it be worth the US converting to Islam if it insured "Peace"?

Because that's what it'll take to get "Peace" on Bin Laden's terms.

Think of it. Because what it would take to get "Peace" is laid out here.

As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.

(a) The religion of the Unification of God; of freedom from associating partners with Him, and rejection of this; of complete love of Him, the Exalted; of complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Islam is the religion of all the prophets, and makes no distinction between them - peace be upon them all.

It is to this religion that we call you; the seal of all the previous religions. It is the religion of Unification of God, sincerity, the best of manners, righteousness, mercy, honour, purity, and piety. It is the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and the persecuted. It is the religion of enjoining the good and forbidding the evil with the hand, tongue and heart. It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme. And it is the religion of unity and agreement on the obedience to Allah, and total equality between all people, without regarding their colour, sex, or language.

(b) It is the religion whose book - the Quran - will remained preserved and unchanged, after the other Divine books and messages have been changed. The Quran is the miracle until the Day of Judgment. Allah has challenged anyone to bring a book like the Quran or even ten verses like it.

(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.

(a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest.

We call you to all of this that you may be freed from that which you have become caught up in; that you may be freed from the deceptive lies that you are a great nation, that your leaders spread amongst you to conceal from you the despicable state to which you have reached.

(b) It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind:

(i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator. You flee from the embarrassing question posed to you: How is it possible for Allah the Almighty to create His creation, grant them power over all the creatures and land, grant them all the amenities of life, and then deny them that which they are most in need of: knowledge of the laws which govern their lives?

(ii) You are the nation that permits Usury, which has been forbidden by all the religions. Yet you build your economy and investments on Usury. As a result of this, in all its different forms and guises, the Jews have taken control of your economy, through which they have then taken control of your media, and now control all aspects of your life making you their servants and achieving their aims at your expense; precisely what Benjamin Franklin warned you against.

(iii) You are a nation that permits the production, trading and usage of intoxicants. You also permit drugs, and only forbid the trade of them, even though your nation is the largest consumer of them.

(iv) You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom. You have continued to sink down this abyss from level to level until incest has spread amongst you, in the face of which neither your sense of honour nor your laws object.

Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations?

(v) You are a nation that permits gambling in its all forms. The companies practice this as well, resulting in the investments becoming active and the criminals becoming rich.

(vi) You are a nation that exploits women like consumer products or advertising tools calling upon customers to purchase them. You use women to serve passengers, visitors, and strangers to increase your profit margins. You then rant that you support the liberation of women.

(vii) You are a nation that practices the trade of sex in all its forms, directly and indirectly. Giant corporations and establishments are established on this, under the name of art, entertainment, tourism and freedom, and other deceptive names you attribute to it.

(viii) And because of all this, you have been described in history as a nation that spreads diseases that were unknown to man in the past. Go ahead and boast to the nations of man, that you brought them AIDS as a Satanic American Invention."

Is "Peace" worth the price of conversion to Islam?

Personally, I don't think so.

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/24/2002 07:01:00 PM

 
Nigeria.com Discussion Forums - The Islamic Militants, Again! Nigerian Islamic militants riot over Miss World report

You want scary? The contents of this forum are eye-popping. What's even more amazing are the very few folks who are saying that it's the fault of the newspaper for publishing an article stating that Mohammed might have wanted to marry one of these beauty queens.

For that remark, for the 'offended sensibilities' of the Muslim community in Nigeria, over 100 people died.

Okay - I can understand being offended. I can understand being offended enough to sue the paper into bankrupcy. I CANNOT, for the life of me, both understand and condone the Islamic militants running wild and killing people because of one remark printed in a paper!

Is this how 'good' Islam is for a country? Is this how 'good' Islam is for the people who worship it? Apparently Nigeria's infrastructure and legal system have broken down, and the Muslim groups are attempting to institute sharia law - and THAT isn't working either!

The more I'm seeing, the less I'm thinking that Islam is a peaceful religion - and the more I'm thinking that there's going to be no possibility of co-existance. There is NO tolerance in Islam, apparently. And for all you little Islamic kiddies who drool at the thought of a sharia state on Clearguidance.com - look at Nigeria. There's the future of the Islamic sharia state.

Real rosy future, isn't it?

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/23/2002 11:08:00 PM

 
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | African author attacks 'tragic' Nigeria

Commenting on the rise of Muslim Sharia law in parts of Nigeria, Professor Achebe said, "I am now not optimistic of the benefits that will come to Nigeria because of democracy."

"We have dug ourselves into Sharia; into a situation where we have become a laughing stock of the world, because we are discussing things like stoning women to death in the 21st century."

Over the years Sharia law has been brought into force in certain areas of Nigeria in an attempt to contain levels of crime.

Offenders of the tough prohibitions - theft, adultery, alcohol, drinking and smoking in public, prostitution and gambling - all of which are outlawed by Sharia, risk punishment by flogging, amputation or stoning to death.

And folks thought Southern Baptists were strict...

Looks like the cure can be worse than the disease.

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/22/2002 10:15:00 PM

 
Thomas Fuller is gone. And in going, made a grand exit.

God has a strange sense of humor.
That's what Tom Fuller's brother Jim said after Tom passed away this afternoon at 3:50.

He'd been taken off his respirator just before 10 a.m. since the neurologists determined that they could only find brainstem activity, and if Tom ever did awake, he would not really be present.

Several of us, besides his family, were there for him in the morning as he lay unplugged from the machines that had been assisting him for the last few days. Bill Jackson and his wife Kathy, Nancy Knight, myself, and the family listened to his labored breathing, and as his sleep apnia caused frequent periods of no intakes of breath, we were sure that the next breath would be his last.

And yet this vital giant hung on. It occurred to me that he would be truly tickled to know that this bunch of people were standing around listening to him snore.

The afternoon came, some visitors went, and still Tom did what he always did best: commanded everyone's attention. Stories were told of him at his bedside, and the gentle laughter of fond memories released some of the ominous tension.

The topic came around to Tom's old cat, Pym-cat; Berta said Tom married her because the cat liked her, and remembered that Tom's mother, when she visited, hated that cat. The two would sit glaring at each other. That reminded me of a story I had just read to my second-graders that week (through BookPALS), and since it was a Just So Story by Rudyard Kipling, I brought it up. Kipling was one of Tom's favorite authors.

The others were curious, so I launched into one of Tom's favorite fields, storytelling, and related the tale of The Cat Who Walked By Himself.

Now, it's kind of a shaggy-dog story, and goes on and on, with necessary repetitions in the text. And just when I was reaching one of the main climaxes in the story, brother Jim said, "I think he's gone."

And we all realized that Tom's rasping, laborious breathing had ceased. And it was somehow funny. It's classic magic -- misdirection. I'm Penn and Tom is the silent Teller. We had been waiting, dreading, when that last breath would come; and Tom, true to his wonderful timing instincts, waits until we're not waiting for it, and -- -- well, he upstaged me for the last time.

Jim immediately bent over, and, being a pastor, started a prayer. Which Tom then interrupts with another breath! Not a true one, unfortunately, but literally with his last gasp, Tom trumped his own final joke.

The timing of it all took the sting out of that tragic moment. Tom was at rest, and our grief was somehow tempered and made gentle by the thought of Tom possibly doing it all on purpose.

Our friend is gone. We'll all miss him, but in this passing, please remember that he left us all with some marvelous memories, and that should recall more laughs than tears.

And to quote brother Jim Fuller again:

God has a strange sense of humor.

-- Doug

When I first met Thomas around '84 or '85, he struck me as being the sort of man I'd like to be when I grew up. Thanks for being an example, Thomas. Thanks for being here. Thank you for the laughter, thank you for the tears. Thank you for showing just what someone could be....

And I'm terribly sorry you had to go so soon.

Now, let us raise our glasses in a toast...

"To Absent Companions."

Amen.

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/21/2002 10:25:00 PM

 
Why the FBI Didn’t Stop 9/11 by Heather Mac Donald

he greatest obstacle to domestic security in the war on terror is the worldview of the liberal elites. No sooner had the Twin Towers fallen than the press and an army of advocacy groups were on the hunt for victims—not of Muslim fanaticism but of American bigotry. The liberal commentariat has denounced every commonsensical measure to protect the country the Bush administration has proposed as an eruption of racism or tyranny.

But the elite ideology began its corrosive work long before 9/11. For three decades, the liberal establishment, fixated on preventing a highly unlikely repeat of Watergate-era abuses, has encumbered America’s intelligence and national security capacities with increasingly crippling procedural inhibitions, culminating in domestic intelligence restrictions promulgated by the Clinton administration in 1995. As long as the elites continue to act as if America’s biggest enemy is not al-Qaida but the country’s own allegedly repressive and bigoted instincts, the nation’s defense against terror at home will proceed at half throttle.

Classic examples of good intentions leading to bad ends, and hobbling the folks who are charged to protect us. Read it - and you'll likely be as mad as I was.

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/20/2002 09:56:00 PM

 
Ah, dammit.

Thomas Fuller, an author and playwright of some renown in the Atlanta area (and at one time the Poet Laureate for the SCA Kingdom of Meridies) is on life support after a heart attack. He apparently was too long without oxygen after his heart stopped, and about the only thing operating in his brain now are the autonomic nervous functions. In other words (as Thomas would probably put it) the lights are on, but no one's home.

The decision has been made to discontinue life support on Thursday.

Thomas was respected and loved by hundreds. He was a fine man, and I remember him from not too many years back with a booming voice and somehow larger than life - encouraging and teaching all who wanted to learn from him how to write, how to get published and the like.

I never was particularly close to him or his family - but I respected him greatly, and was always glad to see him, to listen to him talk...

And now, no more.

Here's to you, Thomas. We're going to miss you...

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/19/2002 10:46:00 PM

 
CNN.com - Best sun pictures ever show new solar features - Nov. 18, 2002

(CNN) -- Resembling the work of Vincent Van Gogh, the most detailed images of the sun ever exhibit masterful golden swirls and bizarre dark clouds.

The pictures were taken by a new Swedish telescope on the Canary Island of La Palma, one of the best places on Earth to view the sun.

Decades ago, I got to do a solar azimuth for a surveying project I was on. We had a modest telescope (A Wild T-2 or T-1 theodolite, I don't remember which - but it had a heavy filter) and it was the first time I'd had a chance to see a close-up view of the sun. It shimmered - and seemed to be boiling.

I've seen photos and close-up movies of the sun since - but these are the first I've seen that really duplicate what I saw long ago. It's well worth the time to download the movies and photos off the Swedish astronomy web site.

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/18/2002 10:42:00 PM

 
TIME.com: The Making of a Comeback -- Nov. 25, 2002

Only now—after an election that seemed to give George W. Bush a strong mandate to lead the American people—is Gore beginning to talk frankly about the man who narrowly defeated him in that painful presidential election two years ago. Despite the triumph that Bush enjoyed this Election Day, Gore is on the offensive. Bush's economic agenda, he says, is "catastrophic," his foreign policy "horrible," his environmental stance "immoral."

Gee. Gore doesn't like Bush. Who'd have thought?

As it is - Gore's... irrelevant. He hasn't a chance in an election, and he knows it - so he can spout the usual Democrap and nobody can say he isn't doing his bit for the party.

It's funny. The Dems think they lost because they weren't Left enough, so they'll go further Left for the next two years. It's slow suicide - because they're not looking at what's important to the voters. They're pushing what THEY THINK should be important, which isn't the same thing at all. Do they see themselves as infallible? As an ACCURATE judge of what their constituency (which they're rapidly alienating, apparently) really wants? If so, they've got some funny ways of trying to get back in power.

I wonder if the Whigs collapsed like this? Don't listen to the voter, and lose votes, then continue to refuse to listen, and the party collapses.

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/17/2002 01:20:00 PM

 
Driving While Female

"Now they are more angry at the U.S. than their own rulers. They feel the American media are playing up the repression of Saudi women post-9/11 as a way to demonize Saudi Arabia, just as George and Laura Bush played up the repression of Afghan women post-9/11 as a way to demonize the Taliban.

"Americans are always saying they're concerned with freedom and the democratic will of people," said one of the drivers, a professor. "But they didn't care about what was happening inside our country in 1990. And they still don't care. We are seen only as the ladies in black."

I had the feeling it wouldn't been too long before Ms. Dowd recovered from the clue-by-four blow she suffered in Frederick's of Riyadh.

If I remember properly, there wasn't a whole lot of concern by the LEFT in 1990 about women's rights in Saudi Arabia. Instead, there was a "They have customs, we must respect them" sort of feeling, and a little research by the idiotic Ms. Dowd would confirm this. The LEFT was silent. The RIGHT made some noises, but was hushed by the LEFT.

Of course, in Ms. Dowd's world, history is variable and the point she's trying to make (That the US is evil and nasty and the source of the world's problems because we didn't forcibly open up Saudi society and let women drive in 1990) is much more important than anything else we were doing at that time.

J.
posted by Jerry at 11/16/2002 11:39:00 PM

 
FOXNews.com

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A correspondent for the satellite station Al-Jazeera said Saturday a possible new Al Qaeda statement he received threatened more attacks in New York and Washington unless America stops supporting Israel and converts to Islam.

You know, I'm wondering just WHAT Al Qaeda thinks they can do at this point. You had 9/11 - and since then they've not managed to do anything truely significant. Bomb an oil tanker? Big whoop. Bomb a nightclub? Cretins - we had a home-grown terrorist bomb an IRS building with MUCH more effect. (Hey' we're Americans - even our TERRORISTS are better than in the rest of the world!)

Let's face it. You Al Qaeda guys have lost. You have completely and totally lost. Press releases about how you're going to cause so much damage that the US will be forced to convert to Islam don't count - what counts is what you DO - and you're not DOING shit! The Shoe Bomber the best you can do?

I'd suggest your leaderhip get together for a Movie Night and rent "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". Pay particular attention to the sequence where King Arthur runs up against the Black Knight.

You guys are the Black Knight.

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/16/2002 10:38:00 PM

 
This is sad.

Pre-schoolers protest possible war in Iraq

I'm not for war. I don't like the fact that war is coming. I'd like to think that there's other ways around the problem. But I'm not foolish enough to think that everyone believe the same way I do, and there are those who see an antiwar stance as a sign of weakenss to be exploited, not a position to be respected. To them, your chanting "No blood for oil!" or “I don’t want people to die,” and, “we can’t keep killing each other. Then we will all die and suffer.” is the same thing as saying "Do what you want, we won't try to stop you no matter what you do, because we believe that fighting is wrong NO MATTER WHAT THE REASON."

The kids in the article referenced above have been taught that fighting is wrong - they're very politically correct. They're not thinking for themselves, they're parroting what their parents have taught them. Their parents... I don't believe they think beyond sound-bite slogans. "No blood for Oil" sounds pretty good - until you start thinking about it. If we wanted oil from Iraq, it would have been a lot cheaper to drop the UN sanctions and allow Saddam to sell on the open market. That'd kick the props out from under Saudi and OPEC pricing, and bring the cost of crude down quickly. And it would allow Saddam to run free in his desire to acquire WMD.

The problem I see with the parents is they have no imagination. They can't comprehend that the leader of Iraq may not believe the things they do. They can't conceive of the idea that someone or some people could be intentionally evil and destructive to the ideals and things that they themselves hold dear - or, rather, they can but only in our country and only if they're Republicans.

They can't conceive that sometimes war is a necessary thing - no matter how much you may want to avoid it and strive to deflect it. And if it does, regretfully, become necessary, it's best to not treat it like a game.

They see 9/11 as reinforcing their belief that the US is the menace to the world, that we're the evil ones, that we're the warmongers.

"Sandy Morrill, mother of a seven year old at Berkwood Hedge, accompanied her son to the protest, saying it is important for the children to have a voice in politics.

“This is what they’ve been learning at school,” she said. “They have been taught about conflict resolution, and here they see it in action. The kids get to wrestle with bigger questions.”

And they've been carefully not taught the background that will help them understand the bigger questions. Because the world is not the schoolyard writ large.

It's sad.

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/13/2002 11:36:00 AM

 
Found a hate site today. "Democratic Underground".

It's been a long time since I've viewed a site where the folks were so disconnected from reality. Last one was the youth sections of Clearguidance.com - which may or may not be up when you view this. They're having trouble finding a permanent hosting service, for some reason.

Democractic Underground is based on Liberal Supremacy, the idea that ONLY Democrats/Liberals know what's good for the US, and it's their duty to coerce/force the electorate into getting Democrats into office, by any means necessary. Consider the following quotes from the site.... First, this little rant...

"Enough with the media, already!" Bernie almost shouted. "The best thing that could happen to this country is for the media to drop dead - even deader than they already are. The people are fools for refusing to learn from history what the Republicans have up their sleeve. History, my friend," he said, "is a record that stretches out in unbroken truth. History is a vast indictment of this elephantine bunch and now, thanks to fools, is destined to repeat itself."

And then...

To my fellow progressives and moderates:

The old saying goes: If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. In 2002 the Democratic Party virtually stood for nothing. As a result, the American electorate fell for lies, distorted issues and false priorities propagated by the Republican Party.

I am a lifelong Democrat. I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I believe it is time for a rebellion. A rebellion against a socio-political establishment brimming with arrogant Republicans; lapdog media conglomerates and affluent lobbyists who are dedicated to the preservation of a self-serving, impersonal, bloated government.

In spite of growing concern about President Bush's handling of the economy, foreign affairs and the so-called war on terrorism, Democratic politicians across the nation provided opposition without idealization. It seems so many campaigns during this mid-term election were devoid of new ideas. Instead, candidates and incumbents offered either the status quo or slight variations of Republican objectives. Meanwhile, almost no challenges were offered when conservatives continued to charge that Democrats were "unpatriotic" and "tax-and-spend liberals." Without an effective response, the charges stuck.

Odd how the media was impartial when it looked like the Democrats would win, isn't it? And how Republicans are 'arrogant', and all are dedicated to the "preservation of a self-serving, impersonal, bloated government."

Yet, oddly enough,. that self-same "self-serving, impersonal, bloated government" is a necessity when Democrats control things.

In short, IMO Democratic Underground is a site of the clueless, by the clueless, and for the clueless. They are convinced they are right, they are convinced we are excruciatingly stupid because we don't see that they're right. They insist the Clinton years were ones of virtue, and that the policies established then are the only policies that can keep us out of war, out of financial downturns, out of any sort of problem in general and make the US a wonderful place - if only those damn Republicans would let the Democrats do all they want to do, and all the 'stupid fools' out there remember to vote the way they're told.

And they allow no dissent on their site, BTW. But hey - it's a free country - as long as they don't have the reins.

I'll probably be accused of being a hatemonger by pointing out this site - but what the heck. Best to see yourself from the Democratic point of view. You're a sheep, you're ignorant, and you don't vote the way you should. This must be stopped for your own good.

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/13/2002 10:50:00 AM

 
Thousands take to streets in Iran

TEHRAN, Iran, Nov. 12 — Thousands of Iranian students ignored official warnings and demonstrated for the fourth day running Tuesday against a dissident’s death sentence and to demand freedom of speech and political reform. Some 5,000 students gathered at Tehran University, once the hotbed of revolutionary fervor that overthrew the shah two decades ago, in support of academic Hashem Aghajari, sentenced to hang for questioning clerical rule in the Islamic republic.

Tell me again how the Islamic street speaks with one voice. The mullahs would do well to remember their history. The students made Iran the Islamic state it is - they can unmake it, too.

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/12/2002 10:15:00 PM

 
Looking at the pictures of the Iraqi Parliment voting unanimously to reject the UN resolution - one thought comes to mind.

These guys know they're killing themselves. And they see no option but to pull the trigger.

But they don't have a choice, do they? If they dare dissent, they and their families will be killed in short order. Saddam doesn't allow dissent.

100% of his population supports him. 100% of his Parlimentary votes go his way. And why not? He's done so many good things for his country. Look at all the palaces he's built since the Gulf War....

The best - the absolute BEST - these poor guys can hope for is a quick end to Saddam and minimal damage to the infrastructure of Iraq in doing so.

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/12/2002 10:16:00 AM

 
Making Light: November 2002 Archives

Any sane person's going to be wary of guns. But if you've never handled one, and you don't know anyone who does, they're just plain frightening. Basically, I figure guns are like gays: They seem a lot more sinister and threatening until you get to know a few; and once you have one in the house, you can get downright defensive about them.

Oh, lordy. Another liberal finds out that firearms aren't the evil things they've been painted.

Pretty soon, he'll start thinking conservatively... (grin)

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/10/2002 09:33:00 PM

 
Two new links up on the side - one to Michelle at A Small Victory and Jake Arnsparger at Jake Anrsparger's Random Rants. (Well, it's not QUITE called that.)

Welcome! This should increase the hits on your site by about .2 per day! Woo-hoo!

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/07/2002 09:39:00 AM

 
So the Republicans win big.

Last time I voted Democrat was before '92. Maybe it was because I was actually OLD enough to pay attention to the diconnect between what the Dems SAID they were about and what they actually did. I was concerned about abortion rights - but now, after the birth of Aaron, I find them not so important. I still feel the right to choose is important, but it's not the be-all and end-all of politics.

After '91-92, I started looking, and started squirming. And I started thinking how I'd been willing to accept whatever Democratss had been saying without cross-checking it. I mean, it was a Bad Time! We needed a New Idea! We needed Clinton in the White House! And the figures didn't add up to the Worst Depression Since the '30s, but that sure didn't seem to matter. They were pulling out all stops to get Clinton in. After all, we NEEDED him....

Yeah, over the next year or two I saw how we needed him. And I just got fed up. The more I saw, the more I realized I'd been a willing accomplice to reaming this country with a sandpaper dildo. The idea that Democrats knew what was good for the country got pretty well disabused in my mind.

Because it seemed the more the Dems got, the more they wanted. And it required 'sacrifice' for 'the good of the children' - and every time they GOT want they wanted and things DIDN'T get better, it was because of the Republicans messing it up somehow.

Then the Republicans took control of the House and Senate in '94, and the economy took off.

Now, I'm as dumb as the next guy, but when you get what you want and it turns out to be bad for you, isn't it an indication that what you're wanting may not be what you need?

And when what the Dems campaign against and say will cause disaster turns out to be an economic boom... well, whack my ass with a clue-by-four. Maybe I'm a Republican after all!

Then I've watched how the Dems acted in 2000 when Gore didn't get shoved into office, and how they acted after 9/11, and how they acted at Wellstone's funeral/campaign rally. And after that, there's pretty much no way in hell I'll vote for a Democrat now. I'll vote Independent, I'll vote libertarian, I'll vote Green - and hold my nose if need be. If the Republican candidate is breathing, can string together coherent sentences, and has ideas approximating my own, I'll vote for him.

But as far as I'm concerned, the Democrats can go piss up a rope, until they significantly change their tune. They've worried so much about being 'relevant', maing points and looking at politics like a game of numbers instead of something that is actually AFFECTING the country, that they've made themselves irrelevant.

J.


posted by Jerry at 11/06/2002 03:55:00 PM

 
Nostalgia:

Cleaning up around Chez Chaos, I found some old Myriads. One dated back to 1993, and Keith was congratulating John C. about his new inkjet printer. Now, getting something 'high ticket' like that isn't even worth mentioning, but back when if you were lucky you had an 18 pin dot matrix printer it was. I also found the stories that Robin wanted, Terry. Contact me on them.

I also found some sandals I bought on Rotation back in 1979 - that I got in Athens, Greece. Man, the memories... Sometimes I almost feel swamped with them, with items such as the sandals and an old silk shirt a girlfriend made for me for SCA use having significance such that it's very difficult to throw them away - despite the fact I'm 50 lbs too heavy to fit into it any more.

And I'm finding myself oddly conflicted by my decision to retire from the Reserves. (For those interested, the last day will be 2 April. Guess I should have put the paperwork in a day earlier - it would have been appropriate.) Folks are telling me I'm valuable - the squadron commander and LG commander to be exact, but I sure don't feel that way. I'm bored, I'm uninspired by the work, I get no satisfaction from it, I'm not likely to get any more promotions. And I honestly feel the best thing I can do is get out, open a slot for some other Personnel specialist who actually LIKES the field to move up. Of course, with what's coming it may all be moot. But if our squadron got activated and sent overseas, at the state of readiness we're in, we'd really have to be hurting. Guess 23 years (28 if you count the 5 years between getting off active duty and getting back into the Reserves) is long enough, with 13 years of it doing something I didn't really want to do in the first place.

It seems so easy in novels like Starship Troopers, or the ones listed to the left. You join up (or get drafted) and there's action and adventure and a happy ending. In real life, there's tedium, loneliness, and no happy ending - except in life there's no 'ending' - the story just keeps going on and on.

Well, enough with the maudlin stuff here. Go watch some kittens or something. BTW, pretty much everything at that site, Rathergood.com, is funny. Then again, it could just be the mood I'm in.

J.

posted by Jerry at 11/04/2002 08:36:00 PM

 
Michele, at A Small Victory is rather upset because 4 people dropped her from their link listings, in a very public manner. Seems that she (reading between the lines) was getting too conservative for their tastes, so she had to be publically removed and humiliated on their blogs.

I guess the viciousness is because the stakes are so small...

J.



posted by Jerry at 11/01/2002 10:38:00 PM

 
CNN.com - Ryder lawyer suggests frame-up - Oct. 31, 2002

A lawyer for actress Winona Ryder suggested Thursday that a Saks Fifth Avenue theft investigator might have had a financial motive to try to frame the actress for shoplifting.
Attorney Mark Geragos said the husband of Colleen Rainey, the investigator, is a struggling screenwriter. He suggested Rainey might have framed the actress in hopes the couple could make money from a story about the alleged December 12 shoplifting.

Okay. Now, here's the question I've got. Do the security cameras show her cutting tags and stealing stuff?

(And does this strike anyone else with the same feeling that if it had been you or I 'stealing', that we'd be in jail at this point? Sure, she's beautiful. Sure, she's a star. Sure, she was 'shoplifting to prepare for a possible role'.

Sure she was...)

J.

posted by Jerry at 10/31/2002 10:15:00 PM

 
Apollo program for energy?

In the United States, a hydrogen lobby that includes Shell Oil last month urged the U.S. government to invest $5.5 billion in hydrogen over 10 years.

That's promising. There's also critiques of solar, fission, and wind.

No easy answers, really. And no cheap ones - which may be more relevant.

J.
posted by Jerry at 10/31/2002 10:09:00 PM

 
MSN Entertainment - News

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Fox canceled producer David E. Kelley's new law office drama girls club after just two airings because of low ratings.

Does it strike you that maybe they need to actually let a show RUN in order for it to find an audience? Two airings - and it didn't have significant market share, so they cancel it.

I guess it makes sense in a Hollywoodish way, but it sure seems to me that you might want to give a show a chance to suceed.

But hey, if it's not a hit after two weeks - it'll never be, right?

J.

posted by Jerry at 10/31/2002 09:20:00 PM

 
Let everyone have a gun - theage.com.au

It is thus not clear that more gun control laws designed to reduce rates of gun ownership will make Australians safer. While they may reduce the availability of guns for the commission of crimes, they simultaneously reduce the availability of guns for defence, reducing the ability of private citizens to stop crimes during their commission and reducing the deterrent effect received from the likelihood of criminals facing armed victims. To evaluate the Prime Minister's proposals, we need to consider these potential costs as well as their potential benefits.

Sounds like Australia is starting to feel the clue-by-four beating on their heads. Defenseless doesn't win points from agressors. The mugger is glad, because his job is safer.

J.

posted by Jerry at 10/30/2002 10:41:00 PM

 
ABC7Chicago.com: Man busted in stolen purple dingo head

Some thieves try to hide their stolen goods. Others put on a purple dingo head and go to the bar.
Ryan McAllister, 27, and James Masterson, 21, allegedly swiped the oversized costume of Zap, the mascot of the Detroit's WNBA team, the Shock, after attending a game at the Palace of Auburn Hills last Wednesday, Oct. 24.
They'd been watching a Detroit Pistons preseason basketball game when they decided to take the suit.

Ummmm.....

(bites lower lip)

Nope. Ain't gonna say it.

J.

posted by Jerry at 10/30/2002 09:22:00 PM

 
ABC7Chicago.com: Radioactive cat poop gets out of the bag

Be careful what you do with your radioactive cat poop.
William Jenness agreed to pay a $3,856.47 fee for mishandling his cat Mitzi's litter box.
Jenness took Mitzi, 11, to a local clinic to treat her hyperthyroidism. The treatment involved giving the feline an injection of radioactive iodine, and Jenness was given strict instructions to flush his pet's waste down the toilet, rather than throw it out.
Cats who undergo the procedure are themselves radioactive for several days, as is their waste product. After a few days, radiation levels return to normal.
Jenness didn't follow the instructions.

Ummmm....

Nah. I still won't say the obvious.

J.

posted by Jerry at 10/30/2002 09:21:00 PM

 
ABC7Chicago.com: Amateur jackasses catch police attention

Police came scrambling to respond to a reported drive-by shooting, but it turned out it was only a bunch of Jackass wannabes.
"When we first got the call it was for a drive-by shooting," said Clearwater Police spokesman Wayne Shelor, describing the Saturday, Oct. 26, incident.
Instead they found a car full of teens with a paintball gun and video camera, who had decided to imitate the stunts in Jackass, the new movie of outrageous pranks and stunts that topped the box office rankings last week.

Ummm.

Nah. I won't say the obvious.

J.

posted by Jerry at 10/30/2002 09:20:00 PM

 
Detroit's voter rolls in question - 10/29/02

Detroit's voter rolls in question
Mayor's office says total too high by 150,000; dispute could skew count, prompt challenges

DETROIT -- Despite having died eight years ago, Kathe Beddow still retains one mortal privilege: The right to vote.
The city Elections Department in July sent Beddow a voter registration card, even though she hasn't voted in more than a decade. She is also still listed as a registered voter with the Secretary of State's Office.

Wonder what the breakdown is - how many of the deceased are Democrat, how many Republican...

J.

posted by Jerry at 10/29/2002 08:49:00 PM

 
United Press International: Report: Nerve gas killed Russian hostages

The doctors in the footage described the gas as being a neuro-paralyzing agent, one that disables the body's nervous system. The description contrasts with other reports that described it as a sleeping gas.

Looks like I was wrong about it being a blood agent. Still keeping my fingers crossed on the counteragents. (Usually atropine and pralidoxime chloride, and some diazepam to take care of the convulsions.)

So - quick ethics question:

Was it okay for Russia to use nerve agents on terrorists and hostages, when there's a certainty of death for all if another course of action was followed?

J.

posted by Jerry at 10/27/2002 10:39:00 PM

 
Descent Into Evil

He was a soldier, a Muslim convert, and a man who had failed in love and business, who clung tightly to a teenager not his son. The story of a journey into darkness and murder—and the investigation that brought a killing spree to an end

Oh, are we supposed to feel sorry for this man? Oh, he went on a journey into darkness and murder.

It's not his fucking fault! It was (fill in favorite bleeding heart reason here) that was the cause!

No. Nobody forced this man to shoot people. Nobody forced him to make cutouts in his trunk so he could shoot people while going unobserved.

And that the spin is starting toward his not being fucking RESPONSIBLE for his actions is just plain idiotic.

J.

posted by Jerry at 10/27/2002 08:56:00 PM